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Monday, 22 September 2014

Shock horror, metal detectorists find hoard!

Metal detectorists find a Roman coin hoard in a pot urn.

I want to start this blog post with a congratulations to the group above who unearthed an amazing Roman coin hoard during a club dig in the North East of England this weekend. A truly amazing, once in a lifetime find that is surely the envy of any metal detectorist who enjoys building the bigger picture of our history.

It seems however, probably unsurprisingly to anyone who keeps up with what the archaeo-bloggers say, that that this is a complete travesty and total loss of information. The apparent loss of context being the main concern of the critics. Whilst i personally would never have dug up this hoard due to the fact that after digging more than a foot i would have put it down to being deep large iron or possibly drainage pipes, these guys carried on to a depth of around 3 foot to reach the coin filled urn.

It is said that we should not dig below the plough level because we are digging into undisturbed soil but this is down to personal choice and what you decide is responsible and ethical in your approach to metal detecting. If I had one gripe with how this dig was handled it would be that the FLO and archaeologists where not on site to dig up the hoard once it was realised that it was indeed a hoard. Considering it was a Sunday and there were quite possibly non prepared to go to the site on a Sunday, the guys did a really good job of digging the urn out the ground. It does appear to be pretty complete and undamaged by the metal detectorists so in my mind given the circumstances they have made a good job of what could potentially turned into a bad situation.

I know Paul Barford is doing his utmost to slate and cause a scene with a bombardment of blog posts aimed at turning this discovery into yet another outcry calling for regulation to our hobby. The chances of this hoard being discovered randomly by archaeologists was slim to non and now that the archaeologists know the find spot (thanks to the metal detectorists) they will be able to study the site in greater detail to uncover more of it's history.

I wish the guys the greatest of luck with the treasure process and that they don't take the negative comments that are already showing to heart to much.